Desireless is French singer Claudie Fritsch-Mentrop who’s voice is one of the most beautiful in the world. Her track Voyage Voyage was released in 1986 and hit number-one in many European and Asian music single charts, selling more than 5 million copies. It still remains to be one of the most sought-after tracks on the playlist of countless radio stations (on the airwaves and internet) around the world. Every year, it seems, Voyage Voyage is still being discovered by new listeners who hear it for the first time. The track is a perfect blend of emotional French singing/song-writing and Italo-disco that drives and carries the song to a whole new level of synth-pop, becoming essentially a romantic and electronic dance. Personally, I prefer the Britmix version over the 12″ Mix of Voyage Voyage. The lead/front vocals are dryer and not as drenched in reverb, thus adding more warmth and depth with closer presence of emotions to the overall delivery and feel of the tune. The same goes for the background vocals, hearing more clearly all the “aah” and “voyaaah voyaaah” vocal layers. The tight, melodic bassline and its underlying syncopated synth chord chops/stabs also have more presence than the 12″ Mix … not only fitting perfectly around and under the vocals & drums but also driving the entire Britmix with more oomph … making the track more serious and groovy. Voyage Voyage is one of those rare successful synth-pop tracks that is true through and through. It always makes me close my eyes and sing passionately along with Claudie.

Desireless – “Voyage Voyage” Lyrics (English translation)…

On top of the old volcanos,
Slip of the wings
Under the carpets of the wind,
Journey, journey,
Eternally.
Clouds in marshes,
Of wind of Spain in rain of equator,
Journey, journey,
Fly in the heights
On top of the capitals,
Fatal ideas,
Look at the ocean…

Journey, journey
Further that the night and the day,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
In the space of the love.
Journey, journey
On the crowned water of an Indian river,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
And never does not return.

On Ganges or the Amazon,
At the blacks, the sikhs,
At the yellows,
Journey, journey
In all the kingdom.
On the dunes of the Sahara,
Fiji islands in Fujiyama,
Journey, journey,
Do not stop you.
With the top of the barbed wires,
Bombarded hearts,
Look at the ocean.

Journey, journey
Further that the night and the day,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
In the space of the love.
Journey, journey
On the crowned water of an Indian river,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
And never does not return.

Journey, journey
Further that the night and the day,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
In the space of the love.
Journey, journey
On the crowned water of an Indian river,
(Journey, journey)
Journey (journey)
And never does not return.

I just came here – looking for something like an interpretation of the song. While I share the opinion of Hashmoder concerning the song and the different tracks I am still not sure what the song is about. Probably it’s something completely obvious – and I just don’t get it.

My try: Well, there is the topic of travelling around the world and seeing all different kind of landscapes and cultures AND never coming back home. What looks like a very hedonist point of view gets somehow transformed, when you put it together with the pictures shown in the video and the melody of Claudie’s voice and the emphasis she uses. The Video shows us people that are in some kind of asylum/ nursing home and we can conclude that they are probably not free to travel. Now the song seems to be about the desire to travel by people who can’t. They are bound to a place, that they want to escape from AND never come back to. Therefore, i guess, the song is about the desires of the socially opressed and excluded and their unsatisfiable dreams and desires (which – by the way would go in handy with the name of the artist).

Please tell me if you think my interpretation is total crap or if you agree at least in some parts. The only alternative interpretation i can think of is: Uh, it’s so nice to travel around the world – with all the people and beautiful things to see. BUT: Come on! This great song can’t be that superficial.

Thank you so much for the lyrics! I heard this song over and over when I was studying abroad for a year and loved it – and the 45 single (or was it a cassette single? I forget) I have produced a really crackly copy. I also remember how my French vocab always could use some work – totally missed the volcanos in the song.

A mistake that is often made for this song in French as well as in English. If you listen close to the lyrics, it’s not “journey, journey” but an affirmation “travel, travel” (the verb) meaning “you have to travel around the world”. There is a confusion in French too sometimes the song is written “Voyages, voyages” (plural). It’s a mistake.

Posts To Remember

While the norm for most tracks go anywhere between 3:30 to 6:00 minutes in length, I prefer 15:00 minutes or longer, like the four seasons. Give me 4 long tracks to fill the hour, and I’ll be one very happy Iraqi. I love tracks that take me on long journeys through various movements. One of my all-time favorite synth-pop groups is PROPAGANDA from germany … who sound like twisted ABBA + Industrial + TechnoPop + Darkness. My favorite Proganda track is P:Machinery. I’ve taken two 12-inch vinyl versions of that track and conjoined them together as one … the way I want to listen to P:Machinery by:

Digitizing them into Protools; Spending two long months cleaning them up; Getting rid of every single scratch/pop/click; Restoring deteriorated sounds through various RE-SYNTHESIS processes and techniques; Splicing the tracks to separate clips; Re-arranging and layering clips to my taste; Throwing in my own synth-stabs, chops and other minor subtleties; Adding & automating series of chained top-notch effects throughout the mix, utilizing parameters some of you could not even pronounce ... thus resulting with more dynamic and reverberated DEPTH to the mix; Fattening the bottom-end; Widening overall stereo perception; and Mixing, engineering and mastering my version of P:Machinery the way I think it's supposed to be heard.

To my taste, P:Machinery sounds better than 'sick' ... more like master piece of shit which blasts sonically across the stereo-field ... not one element standing still but constantly moving all over the place.

Although he produced only a handful of tracks of renown and disappeared into obscurity almost as quickly as he had emerged from it, Manny ( Man ) Parrish is nonetheless one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music. Helping to lay the foundation of electro, hip-hop, freestyle, and techno, as well as the dozens of subgenres to splinter off from those, Parrish introduced the aesthetic of European electronic pop to the American club scene by combining the plugged-in disco-funk of Giorgio Moroder and the man-machine music of Kraftwerk with the beefed-up rhythms and cut’n'mix approach of nascent hip-hop. As a result, tracks like “Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” and “Boogie Down Bronx” were period-defining works that provided the basic genetic material for everyone from Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys to Autechre and Andrea Parker — and they remain undisputed classics of early hip-hop and electro to this day.

What made Trevor Horn’s productions stand out was his unique and genius production techniques and the heavy use of state-of-the-art pro-audio gear, which made him become the torch-bearer for the kind of technology-led pop music which was hip and incredibly disciplined. Trevor Horn’s 12-inch remixes were uniquely long (anywhere from 8 to 13 minutes in duration) and told stories which took the listeners through long instrumental journeys at the begenning of tracks until the climax is reached (around the 5/6 or 7 minute mark). After the climax, the original or alternate full vocal version of the track takes over from that point on to the end, lasting additional 3.5 to 5 minutes in length.

Trevor Horn is the guy who produced and performed “Video Killed The Radio Star” world-wide smash-hit track. I did some major digging and discovered some fascinating, forgotten facts and hidden gem tracks from The Buggles. In 1980, the Buggles’ duo Geoffrey Downes (keyboards) and Trevor Horn (vocals) — who were coming off an international success with their new-wave album The Age of Plastic – to help out on a new YES album. Downes suddenly left Buggles when Trevor learned that YES’ keyboardist Rick Wakeman was leaving the band, and therefore snatched him as well as lead-vocalist Jon Anderson to work on the next Buggles album Adventures In Modern Recording. The Buggle’s second album was completed in 1981 but was never released or charted. The album was a gem masterpiece.

2015 opened on a vibrant note at Austin-based creative space, The Museum of Human Achievement. The 3rd installment of Living Spaces, Portals’ traveling showcase series, featured sets from JUBILEE, Ellie Herring, Holly Waxwing, and Wez, with an installation by artist Beth Link. We’re thrilled, as always, to have supported it. Piece together (or relive) the [… […]

Our 7th annual Zeitgeist! In our roundup of the best music of 2014, we have: An Album for Every Moment: We asked musicians, music bloggers, and friends to recommend a perfect album for every moment of the year. Use this guide to find albums you may have missed or make a new connection with something […]

Living Spaces is a traveling showcase series organized by our friends at Portals. Their next destination is Austin, on New Year’s Eve. We’re once again happy to be supporting the event, as the first two, in Brooklyn (pictured above) and Baltimore, were exceptional. In their words, what it’s all about: “Reaching out to old and […]

We’ve restocked our Merch shop with new tees. They feature a soft print of our logo bubble, and feel very nice. Get one! All of our t-shirts are silkscreened by Paul and Mookie at City Dog Screen Printing in NYC. Most of the screens have been reclaimed, but 1 or 2 of the old designs […]

Our Android app is finally out and you can get it here. It is very nice to use, has all the major features of the site, and does not have ads or monthly fees. Thank you to all the Android users for your patience; this is the fastest we could build something well-made given our […]

It’s almost CMJ week in NYC. There’s a lot to navigate, officially and unofficially, on both sides of the bridge. And like anything with music, it’s generally a good idea to see what the blogs are up to. So we built a thing that highlights shows in the music blog community. Have a listen/look at […]

Last Friday Living Spaces #2 took place in Baltimore, and it was special. We’re thrilled to have helped the Portals crew bring such a good mix of music, art, and people together under one roof. Much thanks goes out to all the artists involved (that’s Soft Cat pictured above) and to the nice folks at […]

Recently we teamed up with BBC Radio 6 Music to once again present a special half-year Music Blog Zeitgeist, looking at the most-blogged artists of 2014 thus far. Listen to BBC’s Tom Robinson countdown the top 20 here. In addition to the overall list, we refreshed our Ones To Watch feature for the second half […]

We’ve always been fans of the Portals community—what they do both on and offline. This led to supporting a rather adventurous balloon-filled night last October (that’s Emily Reo pictured above). And now we’re happy to help them continue their traveling showcase series called Living Spaces. The first event happened earlier this month in Brooklyn, […]

Stack is our latest experiment in delivering the most interesting music on the web directly to you. It’s a short newsletter highlighting some tracks that are getting attention on the site, compiled weekly by the Hype Machine team. If you liked listening to Hype Machine Radio for a quick rundown of new music, you’ll like […]

We've covered a lot of post-disco electro funk material here at Beat Electric, here's a little throwback with a more traditional straight ahead disco sound. This beautiful Canadian cut was included in a Trocadero Transfer mix we posted a while back. A friend of mine gave me this 12" around December and its haunting infectious sound has found […]

Happy New Year Beat Electricians! This is one of those highly unknown, un-googleable tracks that blows minds on the dance floor. I really did try locating some info on this boogie beast but it is mysterious! All I can say is that it was made in 1986 somewhere in the U.K. Anyway, I really like the lyrics to this track plus I have listened to the song a millio […]

Nothing to cure the Funkmosphere hangover blues like a new post. Firstly, just want to give one more shout out to Dam Funk and all of the Funkmosphere residents (Billy Goods,Laroj,Matt Respect, Ron aka Randy Watson, and Eddy Funkster) for keeping the funk strong in Los Angeles. I really says something to the quality of the night when they can stay strong for […]

This "torrential" downpour in Southern California has provided a great setting for trying to dig up some deets on Nathan McKinney and Desert Bone Records. Apparently, the info for this artist is pretty scarce, most of my search results are Youtube videos with "hynas" on cars and comments full of homies proclaiming how this is a "fir […]

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And all the best to you too, Elliot, for your lovely feedback you've emailed me :)
Hashmoder

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